Invincible Women

The Unsung Heroines of D-Day

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Never doubt a woman’s ability to rise to any challenge

The complexity and breadth of the part women played in D-Day is breathtaking. Women stepped into unfamiliar roles at a time of crisis with a great sense of determination to excel at the tasks at hand.

While this book in no way detracts from the heroism of the men who landed on the beaches of Normandy, it shows what a vital contribution women made to the operation’s success, including

the pilots who ferried over 80 different types of aircraft all over Britain to be in the right place at the right time, far more than any male pilot would ever fly and without the benefit of weapons or radio
the archaeologist who surveyed the landing beaches not just to establish where the landing crafts could safely approach but also to establish where the engineers could drill for water so that the cooks could feed the infantry once there
the photographic interpreters at RAF Medmenham who established down to the finest detail all aspects of the enemy terrain
the artists who created precise scale models based on that intelligence
the plotters who plotted the location of every single ship and aircraft that took part in the landings by interpreting incoming messages and adding their positions to the plotting table at breakneck speed
the munitions makers producing explosives and weapons

women were involved in just about every aspect of D-Day and were vital to its success.

About Julie Summers

Julie Summers is the best-selling author of fourteen works of non-fiction. British Vogue: The biography of an Icon was published by Weidenfeld (2024) to critical acclaim. Her best-selling book Jambusters inspired the ITV drama series Home Fires, which ran for two seasons in 2015-16 and had a regular television audience of over six million. She was listed in the Sunday Times as one of only four women in the top fifty historians in Britain.
Born on the Wirral and brought up in Cheshire, Julie spent the first half of her career working in the art world. However, she had always wanted to be a writer. Her first book, Fearless on Everest was published in 2000, followed by The Colonel of Tamarkan (2005), a biography of Brigadier Sir Philip Toosey, the ‘real’ colonel who built the Bridge on the River Kwai. Her focus on the impact of the Second World War on the lives of ordinary people has been explored in subsequent books including Our Uninvited Guests: The Secret Lives of Britain’s Country Houses 1939 – 45 (2018). She has also written histories of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (2007) and the Royal British Legion (2021)
Julie’s book Dressed for War is a biography of the wartime editor of Vogue, Audrey Withers (2020) was optioned by Gaumont TV who are developing it into a drama series.

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